9th Festival Jury

President

Ieroklis Michailidis

Ieroklis Michailidis was born in Haravgi, Kozani and studied acting at the Drama School of the State Theatre of Northern Greece, from where he graduated in 1982.

He is the initiator and founder of the satirical musical-theatrical group “Agamoi Thytai” in which, from 1990 to the present day, he writes, performs and directs. The “Agamoi Thytai” was the starting point of a long career, not only for him but also for a number of other important artists of today, who he invited from time to time himself and included them in the cast.

In the early years of his career as an actor, he co-founded and co-directed with Solon Artsanidis three experimental theatre companies. In the course of his great career, both in the free theatre and in our two state-run theatres, he has starred as an actor in landmark works of the Greek and international repertoire. From Aristophanes, William Shakespeare and Anton Chekhov, to Eduardo De Filippo, Dario Fo, Iakovos Campanellis and Yannis Tsiro.

Also, in film and television, he has performed with great success leading roles in major films and many popular series. Among them there are “Politiki Kouzina” and “Astinomos Bekas”.

Among his awards, the state award for the best male performance (2000) for the film “Piso Porta” and the audience award for the theatrical play “Iroes” stand out.

He has directed in theatre, cinema and television as well as in major music and musical theatre productions. He has also worked as an editor and radio producer at ERT.

He has collaborated with top creators and performers of all genres of performing arts, such as the directors Robert Sturoua, Minos Volanakis, Andreas Voutsinas, Nikita Milivojevic, Cesaris Grausinis, Nikos Mastorakis, Thanasis Papageorgiou, Levan Tsouladze, Yannis Kakleas, Tasos Boulmetis, Giorgos Tseberopoulos, the actors Giannis Fertis, Giorgos Chorafas, Giannis Bezos, Dimitris Piatas, Spyros Papadopoulos, Dimitra Papadopoulou, the singers and musicians Giorgos Dalaras, Manolis Mitsias, Lakis Papadopoulos, Lavrentis Machairitsas, Glykeria, Kostas Makedonas, Eleni Tsaligopoulou, Melina Kana and many others.

Members

Dimitris Kalantidis

Historian and Film Critic
President of the Greek Federation of Film Societies

Dimitris Kalantidis was born in Athens. He is a historian and Film Critic, president of the
board of the Greek Federation of Film Societies and member of the Film Critics Panhellenic Union (he has been a vice president of the board). Graduate of the English Studies Department of the School of Philosophy of the University of Athens. Master’s Diploma of Specialisation in the History and Theory of the Cinema, from the Drama Studies of the Philology Department of Crete University. Doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication and Media Studies of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (“Adaptation of modern narrative prose in the Greek cinema”).
Writer of the book “Greek Cinema Bibliography, 1923-2000”, as well as many more texts for the cinema in collective tomes, magazines and newspapers.

Maria Leonida

She studied History, Art History and Cinema. She has directed documentaries in
collaboration with ERT, E.K.K., German Television and E.B.U. Her films have been screened at festivals and she has won awards at the Festival of Drama and the State Quality Awards. Her feature length documentary, “To stoihima” was included in the Official Programme of the Festival of Thessaloniki and won the 1st Greek Documentary Award at the Aegean Docs Festival. A collaborator of the Melina Project, she has written the Curriculum for Documentary Teaching in Artistic High Schools, designed audiovisual workshops for the University of Athens, the University of Frankfurt, Directorates of Education, the British Council, WWF, and projects in France, Germany, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Italy, Italy and Turkey.

Areti Kondylidou

Areti Kondilidou studied at the School of History and Archaeology of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and went on with postgraduate studies at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, in Social Anthropology. Her studies continued in the Theatre School of AUTh, while she has been working at the Ministry of Culture since 2006, in Service of Modern Monuments and Technical Works of Central Macedonia, in Thessaloniki. She also worked for 2 years at the Folklife and Ethnological Museum of Macedonia-Thrace.
In recent years, her realm is focused on the operation, the organization  of exhibitions, educational programmes and events in the Cultural Venue of Islahane, Former School of Arts and Crafts Hamidie.

James Fair

James graduated from Bournemouth University, University College Dublin and Staffordshire University with degrees in film and television production. He specializes in alternative models of film production and demonstrated his work by shooting, editing and then screening feature films in seventy-two hours as part of major film festivals; ‘Watching & Waiting’ was screened at Galway Film Fleadh (2008) and ‘The Ballad of Des & Mo’ was in the Audience Top Ten at the Melbourne International Film Festival (2010). A third film, “The Confusion of Tongues”, was also completed in Birmingham in 72 hours (2014). In 2012, he completed ‘Saharan Diary’, a feature documentary about the desert in Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Libya.  James led the curriculum design upon Masters programmes in Raindance and Filmbase (Ireland) in 2011, as well as the BA (Hons) Film programme at Bournemouth University. He has been a guest contributor to Ted Hope’s blog ‘Hope For Film’ and has completed consultancy and guest lectures for international companies and organizations such as Fremantle Media, Yahoo!, Panasonic, London Film Academy and Xinhua.